Not food related- Why I've been away, and latest wedding gossip

I've just got out of hospital on Tuesday after being kept in for nearly a week for observation following a gastric bleed.This is after being in for a fortnight in total 4 or 5ish weeks ago where I had about 3 bleeds (I was let out then took relapses within a few hours twice!) and I've needed transfusions of about 11 units of blood in total over this time.

They still don't know the cause of my gastric bleeding and I've already had an endoscopy, colonoscopy, half an enteroscopy(this had to be halted as apparently I took a panic attack while under sedation), and barium meal xrays which failed to show anything. On Tuesday I had a capsule endoscopy but it can take around 4 weeks for results.

The same thing happened 4 and a half years ago too and was just written off as unexplained gastric bleeding and not further investigated as I never took a relapse over that time until these more recent incidents. One doctor said it was possible they might not even find anything there (which I find rather worrying). I'm feeling a bit better now, just a bit run down and tired.

I'm hoping everything will be sorted by the time of my wedding- only 6 weeks to go now!

We found out last week that the chef who was going to make our all vegan menu had left the hotel where he rented his restaurant, so Jay and my mum have been looking into finding a new place to go for our after wedding meal. I'm really glad we're having an intimate(13 guest) family wedding on a Tuesday so it (hopefully!) shouldn't be too difficult to find an alternative place to cater for our meal- had we been having a huge wedding on a weekend I'd be panicking!

I'm back after a long break! And here's a Pongal-inspired pilaf thing

I discovered Venn Pongal in Dino Sarma's Alternative Vegan book, and as he says himself in this post it can take a while to make. He has a few suggestions for new takes on it himself which I'll have to try out shortly. I came up with this pongal-inspired pilaf recently for a quick dinner- I've used the same spices(see Dino's blog) but instead of the traditional rice and split peas which take a while, I've used quicker-to-cook amaranth and a drained and rinsed tin of kala chana brown chickpeas for a speedier alternative. I'm very pleased with this experiment so I've tried a few variations and quinoa or cous cous also work well in it. :)